I have that happen also. Especially with FC3, where the default key bindings are not intuitive, at least not for an English speaker… Of course… press “o” to toggle between CCIP/CCRP and turn on the E/O camera in another jet and toggle IR sensors in another. Makes perfect sense!
I think if you have a non-clockable pit and rely on keyboard presses, you also have to keep the complexity low and shoot for consistency across aircraft.
I fly exclusively VR, and with the pointCTRL rings a clicky pit is the only way to go when it comes to interface. I do fly il2 at times, but that feels… light. It does have absolutely fabulous skies though, with those high res layered cloudscapes.
Theres a key bind you can set in DCS to have the machine auto start. Or just write your scenarios to start with a warmed up machine.
I do the warmed up and running start more often than I care to admit 
I use a leap motion, and I can totally get what you mean about the PointCtrl - it’s just so immersive to actually reach out and press the button (on the occasions that works - more often I point at it and hit the HOTAS button I’ve bound to click … Leap Motion was an excellent tech demo …)
Not to derail the thread (heaven forbid 
)…how does PointCtrl do knob tuning/turning. I’ve found my Rift-S controllers are a bit hit-and-miss when it comes to that. Some mods it is easy, others it is darn near impossible.
Like you would a mouse: you grab the knob with a click then move vertically to adjust.
I don’t have any good pictures for this particular topic, derail away 
Ah, that’s another thing that I often struggle with in DCS but not Il-2…key-bindings!
DCS has ZERO commonality between most modules for things beyond G for gear and F for flaps. But is F down only, down/up toggle, full down…?
Il-2 uses a common command set for everything. If your plane only has one engine instead of 2, or only MGs and not both MGs and cannon, still the same commands. Some planes have more, some less, but what is in common is always the same.
DCS has clickable cockpits often because 50% of the commands are unmapped! I go in and look and there’s no KB button mapped let alone stick button. Of course, there are usually so MANY commands that you’d need shift-ctrl-alt A-Z, 0-9, and special keys just to get close, but there are certainly some that are used by almost everyone and others that are not.
I also find clickable cockpits a pain a lot of the time because of how DCS implements it. Maybe I’m alone, but I find I need to disable head tracking half the time if i want to click something successfully, and if it’s a dial i need to spin it’s mandatory. Prime example is the RWR power switch in the Hornet. Just look down and it’s beneath the MFD bezel where you can’t click it. So I need to scoot back and sink down in my chair to hit the stupid button which for SOME reason is never on! Mission has the Hornet sitting on the cat ready to go but I still need to mess with the RWR first.
Maybe some people have VERY steady heads. I notice in Wags’ videos it seems like a robot most of the time with how smooth it is, while my screen jitters everywhere I look except for when I’m looking straight ahead where I have the TIR curve bottomed out. But if I need to look at that right panel to turn on the FLIR, good grief, I have to press F9 and kill TIR or I will NEVER get the cursor over that switch as the mouse and head fight it out. Everything mapped to a HOTAS or KB button, though, I can just do it without that aggravation.
In other words, I use clickable switches for things rarely used, or that get used when you’re flying straight and level and have plenty of time enroute to wherever, but I want kb/HOTAS commands for everything I need to do for combat, carrier traps, etc because speed and accuracy are paramount.
Don’t know if my head is steady then because I have never had that problem…although I don’t have the Snorenet or the Mehcat .
I would check for any interference from light and maybe even change the sensitivity regarding jitter. Also would change the curve so that you move more slowly across the pit.
I find it so much easier to learn and remember where everything is in a clicky pit so only needing a few KB buttons is a bonus.
If I dare get slightly back on topic though here’s my feelings on ED investing in WWII stuff. If it wasn’t for WWII modules in the first place I would never ever own
A-10
MiG-21
MiG-15
F-86
UH-1H
Nevada Test Range
FC3
That may not be a lot of things, but it’s far more money than zero.
There are other points to be made for why it’s a good idea in general, but not worth the ensuing arguments, so don’t worry, be happy 
Jedi, when I was still flying with TIR I used snap views which I programmed on the numpad to get still accurate views of places that needed a lot of manipulation (I.E radios and CDU in A-10, I liked the full blown keyboard better than using the MFCD as repeater and inputting via the UFC)
Maybe something like that could work for your hornet. In VR the issue is imo not nearly as bad since you’re not dealing with any relative acceleration where your head moves 5 degrees in one direction but the screen moves 15
I bought the P-51 because there was nothing else to buy at the time.
I put money into the WW II Kickstarter and got a free Spitfire, free Normandy and free assets pack…am I the only person to do well out of the Kickstarter.(?)
I did buy the campaigns but WWII it is mostly outside of my interest. A WWII AI and environment pack would be useful on observation.
Nope, I share the same luck. I was tempted by the Spitfire… but held fast for the Thunderbolt! 
I remember commenting to Wags once about how steady his head is during his videos. I asked what sort of TrackIR profile he used and he said “Default, unmodified”.
I have nothing to add here other than this is a great example of what I was posting about above. Especially the part about flaps, as I was just looking at this a week or so ago when trying to align some of my HOTAS profiles to have similar functions in similar places…
Oh come now fellows. Painstakingly “crafting” your HOTAS to the aircraft is part of the DCS experience. 
This is true. My Hornet profile for TM WH feels extremely natural to me.
There are instances where control should not match - where one aircraft has a momentary button, another has a switch. It becomes awkward. However, I certainly agree there is a lot of potential standardization left on the table.
I would also like more customization. On the TM WH for A-10C regarding the AP mode switch - the Hog takes advantage that the switch it two position with center off. Almost all other modules I cannot make use of the center off position.
For the EAC switch, I use that in the Hornet for the refuel probe as it has a “special” option that means switch on = probe out, off = probe in. Which is a really useful feature as otherwise I would need two functional buttons - one for ON and one for OFF.
I would like the ability to either copy/paste from one profile to another, or to set up a default profile that the others could inherit from. But … I don’t want to loose the DCS ‘separate-config-for-each-module’. I found that problematic in X-Plane as I could not change my throttle to a collective without removing it from the throttle mapping (so, if I changed from flying a plane to a helicopter, I had to remap that axis). When you have a bunch of extra buttons, being able to have them do different things for different modules is a plus. Yeah, gear, flaps are fairly standard but I like the flexability of reusing that switch for something else if the module doesn’t happen to have gear to retract, for example.
Hey @Fridge, you can set up multiple profiles in X-plane 11, and you can also assign profiles to airframes! So you can make a helicopter profile where your throttle acts as the collective and assign it to your choppers, make a GA profile for managing mixtures and props/RPM, cowl flap settings etc with your rotaries and then perhaps an airline setting which forfeits things like mixtures but gives you control over things like the nosewheel tiller. Assign these to your airframes and there will be no more rebinding for flying different aircraft.
hope this tip is useful for you.
Thanks @Sryan! I must have obviously missed that option somewhere, and when I go back into X-Plane I will search it out. I kept laughing at myself because I could see (and often run into) the challenges in the way DCS does it and I was thoroughly confused that I had to remap things in X-Plane whenever I switched to a new ‘module’. I thought I had to be missing something and apparently that was true! 
I’ve never needed to do this much motion in any cockpit with TIR and I’ve been using the standard profile since I first got it. I’ve actually wondered if this is due to variances in how TIR is setup for everyone; I use a hat with the camera positioned on top of my monitor.
I actually prefer a clickable cockpit for the simple reason that I like to relegate non-critical functions to the cockpit itself and push the really important stuff to HOTAS + keyboard.